Author Archive for jack

(Flickr/Vectorportal.com)

by Nadine Bloch

from wagingnonviolence.org

I’ve had it. Enough with the phone calls, emails and Facebook entreaties for money to pay bail to get someone out of jail for their part in a civil resistance action. Let me explain why I think this is such a big problem.

I want to start by talking openly about taking responsibility for our actions. For the moment, let’s put aside the discussion about our (in)justice system generally — though there is plenty to say about the criminalization of dissent, the inequalities of society reflected in who makes up the prison population, the non-correctional nature of these institutions, the need to bear witness inside the criminal injustice complex and more. All that being the case, however, let’s focus on the potential risks and consequences of engaging in civil disobedience. Where does jail time fit as a legitimate and even critical piece of resistance campaign strategy?

Construction gate blockade with street art by Jang Joonhu. Photo via savejejunow.org

Construction of the controversial navy base on Jeju Island, South Korea, is accelerating. In the last week, after months of delays due to local protest, a 24/7 operation has begun. Two hundred low-wage Vietnamese laborers are now housed on site, producing 80 3,000-ton concrete caissons that will create the first breakwater and mooring docks. Round-the-clock resistance in Gangjeong village has followed with dozens of people sustaining a blockade at the construction gate, sometimes in pouring rain and at night under the glare of broad banks of bright lighting installed to illuminate the work yard.

The police battalions brought in from the mainland have doubled in size to 500 riot-equipped officers suppressing the nonviolent demonstrators. Every two hours for the last four days, demonstrators are pushed, roughly dragged and carried from the road, then surrounded by multiple lines of police. A few more cement mixers enter the site, police fall back, and the blockade resumes. Sometimes arrests are made and activists have been taken into custody. One man, Catholic Fr. Lee Young-Chan, remains jailed on multiple charges

Another day of protest and nonviolent resistance at the site of navy base construction on Jeju Island. Photo via http://cafe.daum.net

In the last few weeks, four more men have been jailed for actions taken in opposition to the Korean navy base under construction at Gangjeong, on Jeju Island.

On September 6, as the controversial World Conservation Congress (WCC) convened nearby in Jungmun, five people climbed onto the Samsung-made caisson dock at Hwasoon port in protest of the naval base. Samsung is the prime contractor for the project, and also principle sponsor of the WCC. The WCC refused to condemn the on-going destruction of the Gureombi Rock coastline, a World Heritage site.

by Jack Cohen-Joppa

published at Waging Nonviolence, September 15

Hundreds of people have been arrested, dozens remain in custody and three deaths have been reported as protests against the start-up of the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam, India, reached a crisis point this week. The government’s announcement that it would start loading nuclear fuel into one of the two Russian-built reactors beginning September 11 sparked a new round of mass resistance from villagers living along the coast of Tamil Nadu state at the southern tip of India.